With a wild 10th inning, Blue Jays win

Blue Jays 7 Twins 4 (10 innings)

That was a wild 10th inning

The 10th started off with a Pillar double. Lourdes Gurriel had a long at bat, but chased a 3-2 pitch...it would have been ball four and it would have forced the Twins to pitch to Kendrys. Lourdes had a rough game, 0 for 5, 3 strikeouts, with none of that hard contact we come to expect. Instead they gave Morales an IW (his second of the game). With Luke Maile up, Pillar stole third and, unless I’m punchy, next pitch, Morales stole second. I’m going to repeat that, Morales stole second. The Jays were hoping to steal a run, Pillar would have gone home, if the Twins had thrown to second to catch Morales (not that they would have had to throw, the catcher could have run out and tagged him at second). Luke would take a walk to load the bases.

The rest....well, I’m going to have a hard time describing it. I’m thinking of just saying ‘Twins Baseball’:

• A wild pitch scored Pillar.
• Then Diaz hit a ground ball to short, Gift Ngoepe, running for Morales, running on contact, scored when the ball was booted by Twins SS Gregorio Petit, he came into the game late as a pinch hitter. Petit tried throwing to third but was late and Maile was safe.
• Another wild pitch would score Maile and we were up 7-4.

Two different Twins pitchers had wild pitches that inning John Curtiss and Matt Magill. Mitch Garver had a tough time behind the plate.

We got another terrible start from Marco Estrada. He is leaving pitches up in the middle of the strike zone so much. Tonight, he went 5 innings, plus two batters. If he had come out of the game after 5, we would have been fairly happy with his results, if not happy with how he pitched. Unfortunately, in the 6th he gave up a double and a home run, changing a 3-2 lead to us trailing 4-3. He likely should have been pulled after 5, but we need to get some innings out of our starters.

Watching the first two innings, it really was a miracle that he made it through 5. In the first inning he gave up a 1-out homer and walk. Then a 2-out double, but he got out of the inning with just 2 runs scoring. In the second inning he gave up 2 singles, but a deep fly to center got him out of the inning. He was at 42 pitches at the end of the 2nd. He did follow that with 3 scoreless innings, but they weren’t comfortable scoreless innings.

In total Marco went 5 innings, plus 2 batters, allowed 7 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk with 3 strikeouts. And many of his outs were hard hit balls. We were lucky he didn’t give up more runs.

Our pen did it’s usual great job. Seunghwan Oh, coming in for Marco in the 6th, got his 3 outs, with 2 strikeouts. John Axford allowed a leadoff single in the 7th, but got a k and a double play. Ryan Tepera had a nice quick clean 8th. Tyler Clippard had an equally quick 9th. Roberto Osuna pitched a quick 10th to get an easy save.

Offensively, until the 10th, it was the Kendrys Morales show. A late addition to the lineup, with Steve Pearce removed for reasons that haven’t been explained yet, Kendrys had a single, followed by 2 homers. His fourth PA was an intentional walk as was his 5th.

Beyond that, Justin Smoak was 1 for 3, with 2 walks, driving in 1. Kevin Pillar was 2 for 3, both doubles, a sac fly, a walk and a steal of third.

We had a shot at taking the lead in the 9th, Aledmys Diaz hit a ground ball to short, which shortstop Ehire Adrianza bobbled. Diaz was called safe on the field and, to me, it looked like one of those that you couldn’t tell on replay, but New York called him out. That hurt. Curtis Granderson struck out. Then Teoscar Hernandez just beat out a ground ball to short (again the SS didn’t make a great play and threw wide of the bag). Smoak walked. But Yangervis Solarte hit another one at the shortstop and this one he made a clean play on. We should have been able to score on Fernando Rodney, bad replay call or not.

Jays of the Day: Well, the real JoDs go to Twins pitcher John Curtiss, catcher Mitch Garver (for not being able to catch) and SS Gregorio Petit, they won us the game. On the Jays side Pillar (.417), Morales (.377), Clippard (.147 WPA), Tepera (.112) and Smoak (.192).

Suckage: Estrada (-.289), Gurriel (-.280) and Diaz (-.109, though, if that safe call wasn’t overturned, his number would have been much better).

We had 1257 comments in the GameThread. Big night in the thread. lalalaprise led us to victory. Great job. I couldn’t win it even with getting one comment to come up many times, twice.

Remember tomorrow is a day game